Chase April 20^th 2004 Sapulpa, OK

Left Sagerton, TX late (again) at 1pm and knew it would be tough to reach my target for the day, which was Tulsa, OK. I took the route through Wichita Falls and along the way I ran into a field of camels which I photographed. I continued on to OKC and hit some rush hour traffic but not too bad as I hit I44 and continued on northeast of town on the toll road. After passing OKC there were quite a bit of cumulus clouds growing and getting heavier. I drove all the way up to the southwest side of Tulsa and stopped for food and gas near exit 222b.  I forget the time, but I believe larger storms had already started further north toward KS and some already had tornado warnings on them. I waited at this gas station parked where I could look west as a storm with a severe warning was approaching. I was pretty sure the inflow area would pass near (I was probably in the path), and if it was going to drop a tornado I wanted room to maneuver. I get a bit antsy when in the larger urban areas with the stopped traffic, and traffic lights, etc.  Reports of large hail were already coming in. I decided to drop south and circle around west to come up due south of the potential tornadic area. I went east on I44 then dropped south unfortunately on the wrong side of the river (eastern). I made a lot of wrong turns (even with gps) cause I was anxious and in a hurry and kept trying to find the bridge west.  I finally found it and took hwy 117 west toward Sapulpa.  After I had gone about a mile or two toward Sapulpa I heard a tornado warning for a tornado visually sited 1 mile north of Sapulpa! Problem was there was some traffic, big hills (up and down), trees, and no decent places off of hwy 117 to view north and see what there was to see of the tornado.  I went west almost to town then turned around and went east and pulled over or tried to pull over a few times. I kept glancing north as I drove for position along this road and briefly recall seeing what appeared to be an elephant trunk tornado when I was passing the top of a hill. I drove some more and eventually found a marginal place for a photo. At this point the tornado was quickly dissipating. It still had funnels extending and tendril like almost clear vortices with some debris at the surface. By the time I shot this however and with the camera I shot it with it was hard to make it out. I was using my dashcam that I thought was running but it turns out I had accidentally switched it to some type of 5 sec record mode. I got a few brief shots but not really of what I wanted. I was frantic to try and shoot it with something and finally reached back I believe and grabbed the VX2000 out of it’s case.  (Hmm maybe I shot a picture with my 35mm – I forget). Anyway all these shots weren’t that good and didn’t really show the tornado that I can tell so I don’t really have a good video record of it at that time.

I still wanted to get better position for re-forming and possibly follow it so I headed into the busy Sapulpa streets and took a road north. This was very anxious trying to quickly get through town. I believe I took perhaps hwy 75 to 97 and some small secondary roads. At one point I found a road with a small overpass that had very little traffic on it.  It was on a residential street. The original tornado area continued to my northeast toward south Tulsa with continued reports of a tornado but from what I could tell it wasn’t actually doing anything at this time.  However there was another lowered area that appeared to be rotating and almost, or on the ground to the north. I stopped in the middle of the overpass and shot out the passenger seat to film this – tornado? I’m not sure if it was, but it looked like one. It was somewhat distant so hard to tell violent rotation.  It would be nice to see radar and other damage reports to verify it.  Perhaps this was the original Sapulpa torn and I was just turned around in my directions, but I think it is a separate area northwest of the other area of rotation by perhaps 3 to 5 miles.

At this point another storm which looked intense on radar and was showing as a TVS was coming up from my southwest. I didn’t want to get delayed by it so I broke south back down hwy 75 to Preston.  They issued a tornado warning on this cell, and I stayed until dark near a baseball field west of Preston. Kids were playing and parents were participating, but the large storm had lots of lightning and reports of large hail. Everyone started leaving almost immediately.

This was a good and successful chase.  I was very happy I was able to hit the target and catch tornadoes with no time to spare.

Tornado Extreme Storm Chase